Intel Introduces Their First SSD Controller In Years in the Intel DC S3700 Server SSD

Although we don’t cover a lot of server hardware here at HCW, this is an interesting product announcement to share. Intel has announced the DC-S3700 SSD, a server oriented drive featuring the first Intel branded SSD controller since the X25-M four years ago.

The DC S3700 is purely a server oriented drive, so it has a lot of interesting specs we’re not used to seeing on desktop drives. For instance, it has self-testing hardware built in that will maintain energy during an outage, to finish off any writes that might need to be performed. The endurance is out of this world for an MLC based drive, with “10 drive writes per day” for five years, or a TBW of 14.6 petabytes. We’re used to seeing drives in the 36 terabyte range; this is over 400X that amount.

As for hardware specs, the DC S3700 uses 25nm flash, so the new 20nm flash used in the Intel 335 SSD does not make an appearance here. Paper specs are for 75K iops random 4K read, and 36K random 4k write in models 400GB and up. It handles sequential data at 500 MB/s read and 460 MB/s write as well. This is all interesting, but we will have to wait and see what the final real world results look like.

Perhaps the most impressive spec of all is the price. While desktop SSDs are well below the $1 per GB arbitrary threshold by this point, that is not the case with enterprise hardware. The DC S3700 will be available in the following configurations (1KU pricing)

100GB – $235

200GB – $470

400GB – $940

800GB – $1880

Compare that with the retail prices of some alternatives (retail pricing at Newegg)

100GB Intel 710 – $400

100GB Kingston E200 – $430

200GB Intel 710 – $790

200GB Kingston E200 – $750

400GB Kingston E100 – $1400

800GB OCZ R4 (PCI-E) $4700

We’ll be getting some of these drives in for review, so it will be fun to check out how server drives compare to the sub $1 per GB drives we’ve been accustomed to lately. Subscribe to us on Twitter or Facebook to stay up to date!

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